Stephane Alexander

Ulysses and Monteverdi: passion and action at the heart of musical drama. Penelope sings of her endless wait, her hope to see the king of her heart again, while her suitors besiege her to take her hand and the throne. The return of Ulysses to Ithaca after twenty years of wandering brings the drama to a close. Travelling incognito disguised as an old man, he arrives at the palace for the contest that Penelope has arranged: whoever manages to bend Odysseus' former bow will have the hand of the queen. The old man in rags presents himself to the court, and achieves his revenge… Stéphane Fuget conducts this masterpiece, using every instrumental spell to fulfil his great ambition: to restore to Monteverdi's music and singing all of it's ornaments and colors, thanks to a magnificent cast and their passionate support.

Written in an extremely personal musical language combining medieval polyphony with Debussy's tone colors, Migot's œuvre is an expression of rigorous, humane, and profound thought. In Le zodiaque, one of the great works for piano of the 20th century, this consummately French composer searches to express the spiritual rather than the merely esoteric.

"Percé jusques au fond du coeur" ("Pierced to my heart's depths") is a tragic proclamation of Le Cid's voice, at last put to music by "Mr Charpentier, famed for a thousand works that charmed all of France". This collection of courtly arias, serious songs and drinking songs, played both at the Court of Louis XV and in the inner circles of the French bourgeoisie, is a marvellous maze on the Map of Tendre developed by Charpentier, a poet-musician whose sophistication vies with an irresistible sense of theatricality! Under the direction of Stéphane Fuget, the cream of French vocalists restores the original aura of these gems, with glittering ornamentation.

From 1739 onward, the publication of the Clavier-Übung III, that imposing corpus essentially focused on the Art of the Chorale heightened to the furthest-developed and most consummate potentiality of the genre, marked a decisive turning point and a change of perspective in Johann Sebastian Bach’s creative process. His music for organ, gradually unmoored from the sole liturgical functionality, henceforth responds more to an inner necessity and within a most perfect balance conjugates ars and scientia. This programme offers an immersion into the heart of these ten last years in the life of Bach that Gilles Cantagrel so appropriately calls the testamentary decade.

The notion of interpretation constantly raises the question of how to read a score, and therefore of the very subject matter of the score. Particularly in the Baroque period, and especially in the seventeenth-century, the score is but an infrastructure that the composer leaves behind to allow his work to be brought to life. One should not be led astray by it as you might by a trompel'œil; it lacks a great deal of information: nuances, instrumentation, ornaments, playing styles, etc. The majority of these composers thus leave the performers a great deal of latitude for the completion of their scores in order to bring them to back to life.

Here, four exceptional Grands Motets composed by Lully to the greatest glory of Louis XIV have been brought together: Plaude Laetare Gallia was performed in 1668 as a jubilant celebration of the birth of his first son, the Grand Dauphin; Benedictus is a piece of extraordinary architecture that transcends the sacred drama; Notus in Judea Deus, composed in 1685 shortly before Lully's death, is a true victory song celebrating the glory of God; finally, Domine Salvum fac Regem, an energetic "God save the King", was systematically sung in honour of the sovereign. The sublime Magnificat by Henry Du Mont, who was in charge of the Music of the King's Chapel until 1683, adds yet more splendour. Stephane Fuget has brought together the best performers, a veritable "army of generals" with a vast choir composed of exceptional singers, to bring these legendary pieces back to life amid the magnificence of Versailles.

The genre of the mélodie accompanied Fauré like a kind of personal journal. This music voluptuously – and sometimes vehemently – encompasses the meanderings of the soul: dreams, nostalgia, reflections or mirages . . . Stéphane Degout and Alain Planès take advantage of the iridescent tones of an 1892 Pleyel in their interpretation of some of his finest song cycles, including the testamentary L’Horizon chimérique.

The genre of the mélodie accompanied Fauré like a kind of personal journal. This music voluptuously – and sometimes vehemently – encompasses the meanderings of the soul: dreams, nostalgia, reflections or mirages . . . Stéphane Degout and Alain Planès take advantage of the iridescent tones of an 1892 Pleyel in their interpretation of some of his finest song cycles, including the testamentary L’Horizon chimérique.

When pianist Oscar Peterson and violin player Stephane Grappelli stepped on-stage or into the studio together they really did make magic. Both performers were pioneers on their respective instruments, and both had a real French connection, with Peterson hailing from Montreal, and Grappelli of course, having been born in Paris.

Composer Joseph Guy Ropartz enjoyed a lifespan that cut across an enormous territory of French music; when he was born, Jacques Offenbach had just premiered La belle Hélène and the year he died, Henri Dutilleux rolled out his second symphony. Ropartz also achieved an astounding rite of passage in his own work, starting out deep inside the Franck school, but also embracing impressionist language and ultimately emerging as the chief tone poet of his native region, Brittany; late in life Ropartz flirted with neo-classicism. Before the advent of CDs, recordings of Ropartz's music were so seldom made that they were almost unknown; however, just 25 years into the digital era practically all of his 200 works have been recorded.